Dangers of Science Journalism

byRobert Nagleon11/13/2004

Chris Mooney wrote a great piece about how reporters misrepresent an idea’s legitimacy by balancing it with quotes from pseudo-experts. Nothing we didn’t know here. Interesting point while reading: when a scientific issue becomes “hot,” the sensationalizing tendency of journalism tends to favor the guy with the radical discovery or invention (which probably should make us sceptical of most discovery reporting). In the middle age of a scientific issue, the he said/she said balancing fallacy occurs, and after the issue matures (and a consensus is visible), the issue becomes by definition “unnewsworthy.”